Classical writers declared
the threefold aim of poetry to be to
teach (docere), to move/persuade
(movere) and to please (delectare).
Here’s a CD that very successfully does
all three – a CD which has an explicit
educational purpose, but which simultaneously
moves and delights.

Adrian Chandler, leader
of that excellent group La Serenissima,
currently holds a three-year fellowship
at Southampton University, funded by
the Arts and Humanities Research Council,
to study the growth of the violin concerto
in Northern Italy. As part of the project
he will produce three programmes for
Avie records, of which this is the first.
It looks at the emergence of music for
the violin family, the influence of
vocal models on violin style and the
growing centrality of the dominant soloist.
The second programme is intended to
focus on Vivaldi’s role in the development
of the violin concerto, considering
matters such as his use of the cadenza
and the influence of his concertos and
his operas on one another. Programme
three will examine the legacy of Vivaldi’s
work and the development of the classical
orchestra.

Volume One mixes familiar
with unfamiliar and the results are,
indeed, both thoroughly entertaining
and painlessly instructive. Chandler’s
booklet notes discuss the huge increase
in the publication of music for the
violin in the first half of the seventeenth
century, and the way in which the emergence,
by mid-century, of the trio sonata and
the four/five part operatic sinfonia
in turn encouraged the development of
the ensemble sonata, represented here
in the work of Giovanni Legrenzi, with
whom the young Vivaldi probably studied.
Legrenzi, whose career as organist and
composer took him to many of the cities
of northern Italy prior to his appointment
as maestro di capella at St.
Mark’s in Venice in 1685, is represented
here by a selection of pieces from a
posthumously published collection which
appeared in 1691. Written for a five-part
ensemble made up of two violins, alto
violin, tenor viola and cello, with
harpsichord continuo, these are attractive
dance movements, played with engaged
(and engaging) exuberance by La Serenissima.

The same instrumental
forces are employed in the two pieces
by Francesco Navara, though the violins
are given greater prominence, the writing
for them fairly described by Chandler
as "imposing" and "akin
to the Roman trio sonata which had recently
become fleshed out with added viola
parts, the concerto grosso prototype".
Little seems to be known about Navara,
who was appointed maestro di capello
at Mantua in 1695. The two sinfonias
heard here are taken from manuscripts
which survive in the library of Durham
Cathedral. I don’t remember ever encountering
Navara’s music before; both of these
two pieces (it is unclear whether we
should refer to them as sinfonias or
sonatas) are in four movements, alternate
slow and fast. Each begins with an expressive
sostenuto and it is perhaps in the slow
movements that they are at their most
attractive, although the allegro movements
are pleasantly spritely too. While it
would be overstating things to call
Navara a significant discovery, I am
certainly grateful to Chandler and his
band for effecting the introduction.

Tomaso Albinoni was
an important north Italian figure so
far as the evolution of the three-movement
concerto form was concerned – in, for
example, the Sinfonie econcerti
à cinque which made up his
Op.2 of 1700 and Concertiàcinque of 1707 as well as in
his oboe concertos (Op.7 in 1717, Op.9
in 1722). Chandler and la Serenissima
give us the eighth concerto from the
Opus 2 set, which opens with a brief
but incisively articulated allegro and
closes with a second allegro, which
has some pleasant imitative passages,
these two movements framing a short
(barely over the minute) adagio which
is little more than a succession of
chords. This is not especially brilliant
or memorable music, but of considerable
historical importance in terms of the
role it played in establishing the three-movement
(fast-slow-fast) form as something like
the norm for the concerto.

Other conceptions of
the concerto, naturally enough, did
not disappear all at once. Amongst the
works collected in the Opus 7 (1710)
of the Florentine Giuseppe Valentini’s
(who was an able painter and poet as
well as a composer) are works for several
combinations of instruments – from solo
violin to cello and violin, two violins
or, as in the case, of the eleventh
in the set, played here, for four violins.
Valentini’s writing demands altogether
more technical virtuosity than is to
be heard in most preceding works for
violins and there is a flamboyance,
a cultivation of the harmonically unexpected,
which seems to open up new possibilities
for the composer of concertos. This
concerto for four violins is in five
movements, though Valentini did, elsewhere
in the set, also employ the three-movement
form (as in the sixth concerto). The
concerto, perhaps Valentini’s most famous
work, has been recorded before – e.g.
by Chiara Banchini and Ensemble 415
on Zig Zag Territoires 20801 – but this
performance need fear no comparisons,
vivacious and suitably virtuosic as
it is, colourful in textures and compelling
in its rhythms.

The arc of development
mapped out in this first volume finds
its fulfilment in the work of Vivaldi.
It is represented here by two of the
twelve concertos which make up L’estro
armonico of 1711. Here, of course,
we move into more generally familiar
territory. Michael Talbot describes
L’estro armonico as "perhaps
the most influential collection of instrumental
music to appear during the whole of
the eighteenth century" – its only
serious rival for such a position being
Corelli’s opus 6 set (1714). In the
two concertos recorded here – both,
of course, in the three-movement form
– there is a certainty of musical conception
and execution not to be found (at least
not consistently) in any of the preceding
works on the disc – which isn’t to say
that they are without interest or incapable
of giving the listener their fair share
of both instruction and pleasure. But
these works by Vivaldi make a fitting
climax, give us a clear and triumphant
sense that a distinctive musical genre
has truly found its identity. The vigour
and concentration of rhythm in Vivaldi’s
outer movements and the subtle hauntings
of the slow movements have a musical
wholeness, a perfection of design, in
which contrast and complement both play
their roles, beyond anything that Navara,
Legrenzi, Albinoni or Valentini can
give us. And here they get vivacious
performances, energetic without ever
feeling rushed, the continuo work wonderfully
supportive, the solo playing a delight,
not least in the interplay of the four
concertino violins in the tenth concerto.

The CD also comes with
a kind of bonus in the form of a performance
by Mhairi Lawson of a setting Psalm
112 – Latin text and English translation
are provided – by an anonymous composer,
taken from one of the manuscripts of
sacred works, now in the Biblioteca
Nazionale, which the young Vivaldi seems
to have acquired for study purposes.
The manuscript in question contains
thirteen works, all in the same hand,
which musicologists have attributed
to a single composer, referred to as
Composer X, probably a Venetian born
around 1650. The manuscript includes
five Psalm settings for soprano and
strings; the one recorded here is attractively
florid. After a short but shapely Sinfonia,
Lawson gives a subtly-coloured performance,
her interpretation not without that
strong sense of the dramatic which she
brings to many of her performances.
It is a good enough performance of an
interesting piece to justify its presence
on the CD purely for its own sake, but,
in this context, it also serves as a
reminder of how vocal style fed into
the evolution of Venetian writing for
the solo violin.
So, prepare to be instructed and moved.
And delighted.

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